Jessica Walker advises clients on all aspects of complex, cross-border restructurings, insolvencies, and special situations.

Jessica combines 20 years’ experience with creativity and compassion to optimize outcomes and help debtors, creditors, directors, insolvency practitioners, and other stakeholders navigate:

  • Distressed transactions
  • Operational and financial restructuring
  • Formal insolvency processes
  • Restructuring plans, schemes of arrangement, and company voluntary arrangements (CVAs)
  • Pensions restructuring 
  • Contingency planning

Jessica’s experience spans a broad range of industries, including fintech and financial institutions, energy and infrastructure, retail and automotive.

A recognized leader both in and outside the firm, Jessica serves on Latham’s Ethics Committee and WEB Committee. She is also an active member of INSOL International, International Women’s Insolvency & Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC), and the Insolvency Lawyers Association.

Jessica maintains an active pro-bono practice, including representing survivors of domestic abuse in the UK through the Domestic Abuse Response Alliance (DARA).

Jessica’s experience includes advising:

Companies and Boards of Directors

  • Silicon Valley Bank – advising corporate depositors on the implications of insolvency in US and UK
  • Farfetch – advising on the restructuring of the luxury e-commerce retailer involving a UK pre-pack administration process
  • New Look – advising on its CVA and defending a challenge in the High Court
  • Hong Kong Airlines – advising on its parallel restructuring plans in England and Hong Kong
  • Biwater – advising on the defense of a winding up petition brought by the group’s Pensions Trustees
  • Whirli Ltd – advising the board on the run-up to insolvency and the sale of the business out of administration
  • Arjowiggins – advising on the acquisition by Fedrigoni SpA of assets from the administrators
  • Robertshaw Group – advising the UK part of the group on its Chapter 11
  • Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group – advising on its restructuring through an English scheme of arrangement
  • North Sea oil and gas company, ATP – advising on its successful US$1.2 billion restructuring through an English CVA and Chapter 15 recognition, following its parent’s Chapter 11 filing

Creditors

  • Greensill – advising Credit Suisse as secured creditor in Greensill’s insolvency in England and Australia
  • Petrofac – advising the incumbent RCF lenders in relation to the financial consequences of Petrofac’s guilty plea to ‘failure to prevent bribery’ and its connected recapitalization
  • Borr Drilling – advising a secured creditor in the restructuring of the group
  • Wind Farms – advising a secured creditor to the operators of two wind farms in separate Swedish reorganisation processes
  • A Financial Services Company – advising a major program manager on the rights and recovery of customers and creditors in the administration
  • Lifeways Group – advising the secured creditors on the UK group’s restructuring plan
  • Volta Trucks – advising the secured creditors in respect of contingency planning and the subsequent insolvency and asset sale
  • Derby County FC – advising the secured creditor in relation to the club’s administration

Insolvency Practitioners

  • Small World – advising the special administrators of payment service provider
  • Babylon Healthcare – advising the administrators on the UK pre-pack sale of the business and ongoing administration process
  • Farfetch – advising the administrators on the restructuring of the luxury e-commerce retailer involving a UK pre-pack administration process

Other Stakeholders

  • A non-UK central bank – advising on its application to the Bank of England for recognition of a third-country resolution action under the Banking Act 2009
  • Essar Energy – advising on the enforcement by a leading Indian bank of guarantees and security in respect of a US$500 million debt
  • Mothercare – advising the pension trustees on the company’s CVA, subsequent administration and business sale
  • Ideal Standard – advising the security trustee on restructuring of the group through enforcement of Luxembourg security and liquidations in Cayman
  • A non-UK central bank – advising on the impact of preferred creditor status of an international financial institution on its other financing arrangements
  • Norwegian Airlines – advising a major creditor on the implications of the company’s Irish examinership
  • Auto Teile Unger – advising US Bank Trustees Ltd as security trustee on the restructuring of the group’s US$300 million debt and subsequent sale of the German tyre chain

Bar Qualification

  • England and Wales (Solicitor)

Education

  • LPC (Distinction), Northumbria University at Newcastle
  • LLB, Bournemouth University

Languages Spoken

  • English
  • German
Badges and Logos_Law360_Fintech Group of the Year_2024
February 20, 2025 Recognition

Fintech Group of the Year: Latham

Firm honored by Law360 for advising startups, financial institutions, VCs, digital asset and Web3 participants, and corporations on their most innovative and complex transactions, investigations, litigation, and regulatory matters.